What's that got to do with the price of free range beef in Philly?

[nancylebov]

So I go to the farmer who'd got really good beef at phenomenal prices ($7/pound for most roasts), and practically nothing is below $9/pound.

I ask politely, and he says that the subsidies for grain are what's doing it. Even though he doesn't feed grain to his animals, they've driven up the price of land so much that it's affecting him. I'm not sure how, maybe by way of what he has to pay for loans.

I want those subsidies gone. They might have felt reasonable after the depression, when the big deal was making sure people got enough calories. However, it's turned into a monster, and I expect the same thing would happen if there were subsidies for fruits and veggies, "organic" food, free range meat, and/or locally grown food.

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Blame Al Gore.

So far, everything he's publicly done or said, for whatever claimed motive, has made money for the corn lobby.

And made things worse.

Global Warming! Replace oil with ethanol from corn! (But it takes more fuel to grow the corn than you can get out of it, and that fuel is oil.)

Sugar is evil! Tax it heavily, so soda makers use corn sweetener instead. (But that suppresses the brain's ability to shut off the appetite, so people who were fine start eating compulsively, and since the 80s obesity has become an epidemic.)

Meanwhile Al Gore heats his house 24/7 and eats for free when people invite him to tell scary stories.